PJ Buchanan: Diversity — or Meritocracy?
A voracious and eclectic reader, President Nixon instructed me to send him every few weeks 10 articles he would not normally see that were on interesting or important issues.
In 1971, I sent him an essay from The Atlantic, with reviews by Time and Newsweek, by Dr. Richard Herrnstein. My summary read:
“Basically, (Herrnstein) demonstrates that heredity, rather than environment, determines intelligence — and that the more we proceed to provide everyone with a ‘good environment’ the more heredity will become the dominant factor … in their success and social standing.”
In a 1994 obituary, The New York Times wrote that Herrnstein, though he “was often harassed … and his classes at Harvard were disrupted,” never recanted his heresy. He wrote “I.Q. and Meritocracy” in 1973, and in 1994 co-authored with Charles Murray the hugely controversial “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.”
What brought this back was a piece buried in the “B” section of The Washington Post about the incoming class at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County. ...
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